My son’s been watching Pokemon for three days.
Ok, not constantly, but a lot. Don’t worry, we have every intention of getting to the schoolwork soon, but right now… well, it’s Pokemon. After all, mommy has to process how she’s going to learn how to teach a possibly dyslexic, hard of hearing child reading with her lack of a special education degree.
I know I’ll figure it out, just give me time.
In the meantime, the world seems very thirsty. Or at least, that’s what the checkout lines at Costco suggest. And it is also what the readings for Sunday suggest as well. Even back in the days of Moses, people were grumbling about water… and discomfort, and uncertainty, and fear.
Even then, they did not know what they were going to do.
The last question of the first reading today really struck me – “Is the Lord in our midst or not?”
I know we are struggling with this question a lot these days, for more reasons than a pandemic… but Covid-19 certainly doesn’t help. We are struggling with hope, with understanding, with patience, and with endurance. We are grumbling “Lord, we are so thirsty.”
The psalm presents a possible answer to our longing – “If today, you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Is the Lord in our midst or not? And if He is, and He is knocking at our door… are our hearts too hard to let Him in?
What are we afraid to hear if we open the door to hope?
In the Gospel, the Samaritan woman begs Jesus to solve her immediate problems, but He doesn’t want to solve the immediate. He wants her to think bigger. He wants her to consider that this moment in time, this thirst that is plaguing us, that it is temporary. He wants her to consider that there is so much more ahead.
I almost laughed out loud when I read through the readings today because they are exactly, perhaps, what I don’t want to hear… Trust, have faith, hope, soften your heart!
But maybe what we don’t want to hear is exactly what we need.
